Overview

The Language of Harassment: Pragmatic Perspectives on Language as Evidence addresses harassment head-on by conducting a thorough linguistic analysis of this pervasive social phenomenon. Utilizing a dearth of linguistic research on this topic, this book investigates the strategic language used by harassers to convey their ill intentions and inflict harm upon their victims. The linguistic analysis focuses on how harassment is constructed through verbal and physical interactions between the perpetrator or group of perpetrators and the victim at a discourse level. The author revisits several court cases tried in the US and Europe to show the phenomenal difficulties victims face to support their claims with evidence. This volume applies pragmatic linguistic theories to shed light on the defining elements of harassment, which include repetitive hostile and unethical communication, ill intentions, power imbalances, and harm inflicted upon the victim. In addition, the author illustrates the linguistic analysis through live cases of workplace mobbing, school bullying, sexual harassment, psychological harassment, stalking, and sexting.

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9781793619075

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Reviews

“This volume is a welcome contribution to harassment studies. As stated from the very beginning, the scope of the term is slippery, overlapping with other terms such as mobbing, abuse or aggression, which adds to the need for a book that pins down all the issues that, one way or another, pertain to the delimitation and linguistic analysis of harassment. The complexity of the object of study (highly necessary given its pervasiveness in today’s world) inevitably demands complex theoretical underpinnings, which in this book are mainly interactional pragmatics but also related frameworks such as speech act theory and relevance theory, among others. The book’s chapters also signal the necessity of a publication on this topic and how slippery it is. Still, the author convincingly lays out all the issues and provides a detailed account of definitions, types and elements of harassment, and most importantly, an innovative proposal of how pragmatics can be applied to this controversial issue. A necessary and welcome book.” -- Francisco Yus, University of Alicante

"""This volume is a welcome contribution to harassment studies. As stated from the very beginning, the scope of the term is slippery, overlapping with other terms such as mobbing, abuse or aggression, which adds to the need for a book that pins down all the issues that, one way or another, pertain to the delimitation and linguistic analysis of harassment. The complexity of the object of study (highly necessary given its pervasiveness in today's world) inevitably demands complex theoretical underpinnings, which in this book are mainly interactional pragmatics but also related frameworks such as speech act theory and relevance theory, among others. The book's chapters also signal the necessity of a publication on this topic and how slippery it is. Still, the author convincingly lays out all the issues and provides a detailed account of definitions, types and elements of harassment, and most importantly, an innovative proposal of how pragmatics can be applied to this controversial issue. A necessary and welcome book."" --Francisco Yus, University of Alicante"

Author Information

Victoria Guillén-Nieto is associate professor of applied linguistics at the University of Alicante.

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